Schuette: Keep law firms in place to represent state officials in Flint water cases

Attorney general launched criminal investigation of state's role in Flint's water crisis 2 1/2 years ago

Chad Livengood/Crain's Detroit Business

“We’re not going to change things in terms of how this whole process is being done," Attorney General Bill Schuette said.

Attorney General Bill Schuette said that if he's elected governor he will let state agencies continue paying the legal bills of state employees he's been prosecuting criminally for their roles in the Flint water crisis.

Schuette said Wednesday that he would keep in place the policy decision Gov. Rick Snyder made to let the state departments of Environmental Quality and Health and Human Services pay for private law firms to represent state employees charged by the attorney general's office.

"Right now, we're in the middle of a judicial process, there's a trial — let the judicial process and the trial be completed," Schuette said in an interview with Crain's. "We're not going to change things in terms of how this whole process is being done."

The use of private attorneys to defend state employees has been controversial as the cost has continued to escalate since Schuette launched a criminal investigation of the state's role in Flint's water becoming tainted with toxic lead more than two and a half years ago.

Through late August, state agencies had spent a combined $26.5 million on private law firms to represent state employees in criminal and civil cases related to the Flint water crisis. That total includes the nearly $7 million Schuette's office has spent on the investigation and prosecution of 15 state and local officials who have been charged by Special Prosecutor Todd Flood, a Royal Oak attorney.

The DEQ, DHHS and Schuette's office have budgeted for contracts with private law firms that would push total spending on private law firms in the Flint cases more than $34.5 million in the 2019 fiscal year, which begins Monday.

The most costly defense bill in Schuette's Flint water crisis prosecutions has been for DHHS Director Nick Lyon, who has racked up more than $1.6 million in legal bills. Lyon's department has budgeted $3.55 million to date for his criminal defense, according to public records.

Last month, a Genesee County District Court judge bound over Lyon for trial on charges of involuntary manslaughter stemming from the deaths of two elderly Flint-area men whose contraction of Legionnaires' disease has been blamed on Flint's water.

At least 30 past and present state employees have been afforded representation by private law firms in the criminal and civil proceedings stemming from Flint's disastrous use of the Flint River for drinking water between April 2014 and October 2015.

Snyder's office has spent a combined $5.9 million paying attorneys at Warner Norcross & Judd LLP and Barris, Sott, Denn & Driker PLLC for criminal defense and producing some 2 million pages of records for Schuette's and Flood's investigation as well as the plethora of civil lawsuits the state has been slapped with over Flint's water troubles.

Snyder's office declined to comment Wednesday on Schuette's promise to keep paying the legal bills of the state employees he's been prosecuting for the past two years.

"We're just not weighing in on any candidate statements," Snyder spokeswoman Anna Heaton said.

Snyder also is politically sitting out the governor's race this fall, declining to endorse either Schuette or his Democratic opponent, former state Senate Minority Leader Gretchen Whitmer of East Lansing.

Whitmer said this week that she's unsure whether she would continue paying the legal bills of state officials charged by Schuette.

"I haven't studied it," Whitmer said Monday in an interview with Crain's. "... I'm very troubled by a lot of aspects to it."

Whitmer recently won the endorsement of a handful of Republican leaders in Lansing, including attorney Richard McLellan and Jim Haveman, a former state health department director under Snyder and former Gov. John Engler.

McLellan and Haveman have been critical of Schuette's prosecution of state employees for mistakes that led to Flint's water to go untreated for corrosion control and possibly be exposed to a bacterial outbreak that's blamed for 12 deaths from Legionnaires' disease.

"Part of the herculean undertaking for the next governor is elevating the workforce," Whitmer said. "There are departments that have ... been paralyzed. They're afraid to make a decision. Bill Schuette might (prosecute them)."

A group affiliated with the Democratic Governors Association began airing a television ad in Michigan this week that claims Schuette initially "ignored" repeated calls for an investigation of Flint's water until the crisis "threatened his political career."

Public records have shown Schuette received more than a dozen complaints about Flint's water for nearly a year before he launched an investigation and he initially declined to investigate in December 2015. Schuette launched an investigation the next month after Snyder declared a state of emergency.

"That ad from the DGA is just nonsense," Schuette said Wednesday. "People won't buy that."